Vista Won't Load - Black Screen of OMFG!

Hoping you guys can help me out of this little mess I've created. Bought a cheap Vaio from BB on Monday. Decided on Friday I wanted to dual boot XP and began taking steps to do so.

Used Vista's disk shrink to make partitions but it would only let me have half of the drive so I hit google. Moved on to gparted live cd but that did not work so in looking for a fix I found Pmagic which was supposed to use gparted. W/e I used it shrunk the C down to about 22 gigs and all was good until it finished and said something about an error.

Now when I turn on the notebook the Vaio Brand thing flashes on the screen and then complete black. So I figure no prob bob and dl a vista recovery cd. First it tried to recover and said it would restart. Black screen. Ran it again got a little further. Pop out cd, reboot, black sceen. Ran it again now there is no errors. Ran chkdsk found no errors.

So I move past this point and figure eff it I'll just install vista again to another partition. Did that twice now and no dice. Found a site that suggested editing the bcd and tried that but wouldn't do exactly what the author suggested.

At this point I now that Windows itself on C: is fine so I would rather not wipe the entire drive and start over. I would have just installed xp but the hdd is a sata drive. Seagate I think but not sure of the exact model so I don't know how to get driver to inject and that still won't solve my Vista issues.

Sorry for the long post but if anyone has any suggestions of how to digg my self out of the nice little ditch I've created, I'd worship you for life!

edit: System restore was turned off and there are no backups. Me and my infinite wisdom!

 

I'm not too familiar with Partition Magic, except that I've heard it's very unreliable. It sounds like you'll need to wipe all partitions out and start fresh. If you're unwilling to do that, and simply want to install XP, you'll need to download a program called nLite on a computer that does work.

nLite allows you to slipstream drivers and windows updates into the XP install, create an image, and burn a new install disc. This is the only way I've found to install XP on a computer with a SATA drive in AHCI mode. If you have an advanced video card, then you also MUST ensure that your XP disc is Service Pack 2, or slip stream SP2 update into the disc as well. XP pre-SP2 did not support PCIe cards.

There are quite a few posts about nLite on the forums, but if you can't find one I can probably come up with a general step-by-step.

 

Thanks for reply. I've moved on to trying to install xp. I've got nlite and am preparing it right now. I've already slipped streamed SP2 but I'm having troubles with the sata drivers. I got them from sony but they came as an exe which won't extract on my pc because its not the actual laptop.

Everything I've read so far about slipping the drivers into xp the drivers are ini files or w/e. Nothing mentions executables. I'm trying not do put my head through this desk right now.

 

if it doesnt work, get it exchanged from BB since you bought it not too long ago.

 

Yeah I just might. Spent all day trying to get xp setup and now when it boots it says a disk read error occurred. Press C+A+D to restart.

WTF....damn parted magic to hell.

 

You should just clean install both and during installation make two partitions. When you mess with the partitions while an OS is installed, I've found that it typically doesn't work and corrupts the OS that was on there. Before you start, I'd wipe your HD with boot and nuke. Then clean install XP and assign/make the partitions. Much easier. Then again, why do you want to dual boot XP and Vista in the first place?

 

you killed you're mbr it seems.... Have you tried using boorec /fixmbr or bootrec /fixboot in the vista boot cd's command prompt?